Apple is not looking to make the screen touch, they are looking to make the keyboard/palm rest touch. If nothing else, Touch Bar should be a clear indicator which direction Apple is headed. Making the screen touch requires a complete UX redesign—at least if you want it to work well.

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Curiously, which features are those? Retina displays? NVME SSD? USB-C/Thunderbolt 3? 10-hour batteries? Massive Force Touch trackpads? Eliminating hopelessly unreliable legacy tech like Hard Drives and CD's? I am looking at the MacBook Pro's right now and can't find these "features established by competitors" that you mention. Perhaps you are talking about the random software feature here and there? The context of "Touch" tells me hardware is the question, tho.

I ask this in the context of laptop hardware, which appears to be your concern. However, I also have an iPhone X in my pocket, and in studying it I cannot find any "features established by competitors" in there either.

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I would be happy if they would not remove features established in prior versions of the MacBooks (and still available from competitors).

I have a 2012 15" MacBook Pro. Directly after buying, I upgraded the RAM to 16 GB (which wasn't even an official option from Apple - but works fine) and changed the HDD to a 512 GB SSD. In the meantime, I switched the DVD drive (via an aftermarket solution) to a 2 TB SSD. So it is still a great computer, esp. as I use seldomly mobile and mostly as desktop replacement.

At work, I see consultants having a MacBook and always a bag of cables and adapters. So shaving off a few millimeters for their anorexic design and decreasing massively the useability / convenience as a byproduct does not make a product desireable to me. But my main gripe is the lack of user access and expandability.
With the current Macs, I have no chance to update the RAM/Drivespace myself over time. And when I look at the ridiculous prices from Apple for the upgrades, I just cannot support this: I bought a 2 TB SSD for about 500€. At the applestore, I would have to pay 1440€. 4TB you get for about 1000€, Apple wants 3840€! I have no problem paying a premium for the added value of a premium product (i.e. a good body and design), but there are now so many downsides on current Mac Hardware, that I cannot justify buying one at the moment.

I wish there would be some hardware competition for Mac compatible notebooks, so users could choose (and show Apple what customers might want).
I'd love to see something like a Lenovo P52 or a Gigabyte Aero 15X v8, but after seeing the specs of the new MacPros, I very much doubt that we'll see something like that in the future...

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The context of Drew's post was: "in the absence of true innovations, add features established by competitors." Since Apple does not use touchscreens in any of their Macs, they are not "adding features established by competitors" as relates to touchscreens. The rest of the industry is adding touchscreens to check a bullet off the list. "Look what we can do. Apple is doooooomed!" The point I am making is that Apple is actually working on those areas which make the computer faster, more reliable, lighter, thinner, better, rather than those areas which represent a pundit's checklist of "innovative new features". Since touchscreens are neither innovative nor new, adding it to a list of "new and innovative" is disingenuous at best.

Biggest laughing point for me is watching some dolt stab away at a 13" screen trying to hit MS Word mouse targets.

Stab stab stab

<switches to mouse and curses salesman>

Or watching someone reach up to swipe through a photo library while I calmly make a subtle swiping motion on the trackpad without having to raise my hands (or just tap the arrow key).

As I type this, I am experimenting with raising my hands to the screen to hit the Submit Reply button. Why would anyone want to do this?

I can understand POS systems (I used them for years in the hospitality industry) and maybe artists (although a vertical desktop screen is a terrible way to draw), but everyday computing on a laptop or desktop using touch is just horrible.

On a side note, we used to sell those modified touchscreen MacBooks (I think they were called ModBooks) that the pundits just raved about. They were terrible! In fact, they were worse than terrible. The OS simply is not designed for that; and an OS that is, is not a Mac. It's called an iPad.

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To be fair, you may get a 4 TB SSD for €1k, but it won't be the same speed as Apple's.

Correct. That 4TB SSD €1k is a 2.5" SATA drive, and the fastest of those is about 550 MB/s. PCIe NVMe storage is frickin' expensive, and Apple's implementation runs at 3GB/s; plus they have their own SSD controller in the T2 chip which makes it even faster/more efficient for Mac OS.

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I have a Surface Pro, which I really like, but Windows frustrates the hell out of me at times. What I really want is a Macbook Pro with a touch screen that opens all the way back 180˚... and it doesn't have to have a detachable screen like the Surface book.

I truly hope they don’t go for touch keyboards, it’s not a phone or iPad, it would seriously slow down productivity. Then again Apple cannot make a keyboard that doesn’t suck, so I guess it couldn’t be any worse than what they have now.

I still like my idea of a MacBook Pro where the screen is detachable as a full-blown iPad. The ultimate 2 in 1. Neither the MBP nor the iPad would have to have any tradeoffs , they would both contain all the individual bits that they currently have. The iPad would just go into 'display mode' when docked to the MPB base. And they could create the ability to allow file transfers between the two for convenience.

Do you know where children get all of their energy? - They suck it right out of their parents!

I still like my idea of a MacBook Pro where the screen is detachable as a full-blown iPad. The ultimate 2 in 1. Neither the MBP nor the iPad would have to have any tradeoffs , they would both contain all the individual bits that they currently have. The iPad would just go into 'display mode' when docked to the MPB base. And they could create the ability to allow file transfers between the two for convenience.

I think this would be the ideal, I just don't know how it would work out mechanically. The MBP keyboard base would have what, extra graphics and RAM and battery and processor?

I would expect it would cost more than just the price of a regular MBP so it wouldn't be targeting the 'every user' base. But it would be a great option for those who want both a notebook and an iPad.

As I understand it, the current MBP screen only contains the screen plus camera/mic/ambient sensor. So replacing the screen with an iPad would cover all those bases. The iPad would still have its own battery, memory, processor - everything it already has. But when it is docked via the smart connector and some kind of hinge, it would enter a 'display mode' that would turn off or balance those other components as necessary.

The MBP base already has its processor, battery, memory, etc. so all of that would stay in there. Implement some battery balancing between the two - similar to the iPhone battery case so that the iPad is ready to go whenever you want it.

I'm sure it would be thicker than a current MBP because of the extra heft of the iPad, but I'd be OK with that.

Do you know where children get all of their energy? - They suck it right out of their parents!

I think this would be the ideal, I just don't know how it would work out mechanically. The MBP keyboard base would have what, extra graphics and RAM and battery and processor?

Yeah, the big issue with convertibles is ultimately physics. Something close to be the above would be the Surface Book: when attached, it's basically a laptop, with the base not just containing the keyboard, but adding a beefier GPU and additional battery. When detached, the screen can act as a tablet of its own.

It kind of works, but the balance is all out of wack compared to other laptops, because the screen portion is by necessity a lot heavier and thicker than you'd expect it to be.

If you're into this, Microsoft (Surface), Lenovo (Yoga) and others have all sorts of approaches to this convertible problem. It's always a jack of all trades, though. It won't be the perfect tablet or laptop; it'll be something in between.

As I understand it, the current MBP screen only contains the screen plus camera/mic/ambient sensor. So replacing the screen with an iPad would cover all those bases. The iPad would still have its own battery, memory, processor - everything it already has. But when it is docked via the smart connector and some kind of hinge, it would enter a 'display mode' that would turn off or balance those other components as necessary.

I can't really find measurements for it, but the screen portion of an MBP is very, very thin. On my rMBP (which isn't even the current, significantly thinner generation), it appears to be less than 3mm. That's less than half the thickness of the newest iPad Pro (5.9mm).

So, adding a decent battery, memory, processor would make it more than twice as thick, and probably significantly heavier, too.

Quote:

Originally Posted by zippy

The MBP base already has its processor, battery, memory, etc. so all of that would stay in there. Implement some battery balancing between the two - similar to the iPhone battery case so that the iPad is ready to go whenever you want it.

I'm sure it would be thicker than a current MBP because of the extra heft of the iPad, but I'd be OK with that.

Well, I recommend you take a look at the Microsoft Surface Book. It sounds close to what you're describing!